


This Is Not Goodbye

by Selenic



Series: A Bond Of Their Own [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Sentinel AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenic/pseuds/Selenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney refused to believe he would never hear that voice call his name again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melagan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melagan/gifts).



> It seems to be habit of mine to pick one idea for romancingmcshep, and end up writing something different :) This story ties to another one that I recently wrote that was prompted by melagan, and they both take place in my Sentinel!Rodney 'verse, which as of now consists of these two stories! :D (Reading the other one will clarify this just a bit, but you'll probably be alright taking this as a oneshot too...)
> 
> A little hastily finished, all mistakes are completely mine. Thank you melagan for hosting this fest again, I hope you enjoy the story, ♥!
> 
> Crossposted [on my LJ](http://selenic76.livejournal.com/96445.html)

 

This Is Not Goodbye

 

"Can you find him?" Rodney asked over the radio, though he knew the answer already. That didn't stop him from wishing that for once he would be wrong, that Radek had been able to pull off some kind of miracle. "Can you find John?"

 _"No, Rodney, I am sorry,_ " Radek told him just as Rodney had predicted. _"Whatever happened in there, it has created an area, a sphere with a radius of about seven hundred meters, that the sensors cannot penetrate. Even our comm units will not work in there, which must be why John hasn't been able to contact us."_

"Don't apologize," Rodney said quietly. "Keep working." That was all he could say, and all he needed to. Rodney knew that in the short time it had taken him to get to the scene Radek had done all he could to solve the problem, and more.

 _"Understood,_ " Radek replied. _"Be careful, Rodney._ "

Rodney stared into the pitch black corridor ahead and tried to think, but his head was a mess. All of his senses were screaming at him, wanting to reach out and find John, but that would only lead to an imminent zone-out, and no matter how much he wanted to rush headlong into the darkness Rodney knew better than to let his emotions guide him. If he wanted to save John, he needed to keep his head together. And he needed a plan.

Scent would be out of the question. There wouldn't be any trail to follow even if the smells surrounding Rodney hadn't been so overpowering. The air around him was filled with the prickly, electric smell of ozone, and the sharp tang of anxious people. Teyla and Ronon were there, and so was major Lorne and his team, Carson, and a nurse, all of their scents mixing together into a swirling mass that shifted and changed with their slightest movements. Rodney could also smell his own worry.

"We will go with you Rodney," Teyla said. She gently rested a strong but slender hand on Rodney's shoulder, and it seemed to radiate calmness and sureness into him. Ronon's larger hand landed with a heavy thud on the other side, and squeezed Rodney's shoulder almost painfully, and he was infinitely grateful for that too.

Rodney listened to the calm breathing of the others around him, their elevated but steady pulses, and drew strength from that. They had all heard Radek, and knew what had to be done, the risk he would have to take. He'd been an active Sentinel only a few months, too short a time to gain more than a rudimentary control over his senses. But Rodney had no choice. The area John was in wasn't too large to just search room by room, but not knowing the condition he was in meant there wasn't a second to waste.

"You go ahead first," Lorne said as he stepped up to Rodney, readying a flashlight but pointing it towards the floor instead of the blackness ahead. Even light was eaten up by the phenomenon.

Rodney stretched out a hand into the darkness and it disappeared almost completely form view. Sight clearly wouldn't work, not only because his heightened abilities didn't include x-ray vision, at least not so far, but also because John was more than likely to be behind several of Atlantis' walls. Rodney only hoped the malfunctioning transporter hadn't stuck John half into one. The thought wrenched his gut into a tight knot.

_No, stop thinking like that, John is fine. He's pulled out alive from worse situations._

"I'll be right behind you," Lorne continued, "and my team will follow within visual range of me, and the Doc and Marie will be right behind them, but we'll try no to be too much of a bother otherwise." He hung the light off his belt. It would act as a faint beacon for his team, but once inside the darkness it wouldn't be bright enough to hurt Rodney's eyes if he needed to use his Sentinel sight. Teyla and Ronon did the same. "We won't see much with this, but call for us and we'll be there in a second." Rodney nodded, and withdrew his hand from the black barrier. He took it as a good sign that it came back whole, but the knot in his stomach wouldn't go away.

Now more than ever Rodney wanted to believe he could actually sense if John was gone, no matter how ridiculous he knew that was, or how much it could possibly hurt. He hated uncertainty and wasn't a great believer in hope. The image of John's smiling face disappearing behind the doors sliding shut was burned into his mind, as was the searing light that had taken him away, leaving behind bits of twisted metal and scorched walls. The last they'd heard of John was the sound of him breathing over the radio, and the soft whisper of Rodney's name. After that there hadn't been even static, just a dead silence.

"Let's go," Rodney said, and stepped inside the darkness. He refused to believe he would never hear that voice call his name again.

Teyla and Ronon were right by him as the fathomless black surrounded him, their hands finding their place on Rodney's shoulders. He let the weight and warmth of them anchor him to this world, closed his eyes to the dark, and listened.

Whatever this thing was, it seemed to be only dampening or blocking things instead of emitting anything. Even sound waves got muted, travelling mostly as vibrations through the structures of Atlantis rather than through air. And that was what Rodney would rely on. That, and the fact that John would be sending him a signal, one that Rodney would recognize.

Only a stupid Sentinel would have listened for John's heartbeat. It was a romantic notion thought up by those who had never tried singling out one beat of a heart out of a crowd of hundreds, and found out that biology didn't really distinguish between the person you loved and everyone else. Rodney might not be stupid, but he had been curious.

He tuned in to the hums and vibrations of Atlantis, blocking out the noises that people all over her were making, including those closest to him. The world around Rodney gradually faded, leaving behind only the warm imprint of two hands that kept him from slipping away completely. Rodney listened to Atlantis, and amongst the sounds reverberating through her structures searched for a pattern, a string of sounds he knew would be sent only for him. If John was alive, it would be there. And it was.

 

– • • – • – – • – • • – • – – • – • • – • – – • – • • – • – – • – • • – • – – •

 

So faint at first that Rodney almost missed it, but once found, Rodney's hearing latched onto it, barely staying under his control. A sharp pain in his shoulder pulled Rodney back from the brink just in time. _More, he needed more to be sure._ Just hearing wouldn't be enough, the signal was too weak.

Rodney barely registered his fingers twitching, or how Ronon and Teyla guided him towards a wall, but once he touched it, he was flooded with relief, hope—and knowing what the message meant, an unbearable ache.

Beneath his fingertips the signal beat loud and clear, and Rodney stumbled after it in the dark.

 

~~~

 

Rodney fell to his knees, palms flat against the floor, panting. He'd followed the signal through a dark maze of rooms and corridors, the skin of his fingers worn almost raw from running against the endless seeming surfaces that carried the vibration.

"Here," Rodney said in a pained whisper, and fought the urge to claw his way through the metal. "Below." The sound was almost hurting his hands now, pounding through his body and ringing in his ears. He should have dialed his senses down but he didn't want to let go, didn't want to lose his only connection to John.

All the way running here Rodney had heard the signal get slower, pause intermittently, and each time it did Rodney had pushed himself farther, faster. Now he was close, so close, but still too far away and too exhausted to move. Firm hands still gripped him, held him so he wouldn't collapse. His anchors hadn't let go of him once, but now even their hold was fading. Rodney wanted to sink into the rhythm of the sound, melt into it and flow to the source of it, to John.

Maybe this was how they went crazy, all those Sentinels who were separated from their Guides for too long, or lost them. Rodney wouldn't know, he'd never had a Guide, and didn't need one either. Rodney had John. But for the first time in his life Rodney felt sympathy for every single Sentinel and Guide in existence, because no-one in their right mind would choose this kind of torment voluntarily.

Rodney would be the first to deny any misguided beliefs about soulmates or eternal bonds, but he'd be lying to himself if he tried to deny how John had become engraved into his very being, intertwined with him in an inseparable way. And right now, Rodney couldn't imagine keeping sane if he lost him. But he hadn't come this far to succumb to a damn zone-out.

Groaning with the effort, Rodney forced himself to tune his senses down, and the noises around him became audible again. Feet scuffling about, orders shouted, Teyla's voice calling out to him. He heard them, but Rodney didn't risk opening his eyes yet. He still needed to focus on the sound beneath his hands. They could probably all hear it now, the handle of a gun banging on metal, repeating the message over and over again.

"If he knows we're here, why won't he stop?" Rodney heard someone ask, one of Lorne's marines. "And what do those four letters even mean? We keep replying to him in Morse code, but he just sends keeps sending the same thing back, and I don't think 't-i-n-g' is any kind of military code.

"Don't know, don't care," Lorne replied. "What matters is that he's alive, let's keep him that way and maybe you can ask him later."

"Yes sir, sorry sir."

"Sir, I've found an entrance!" another voice yelled from somewhere. "This way!"

"Doc, get your team and follow us, Ronon, Teyla, grab McKay!" Lorne shouted orders, and then Rodney was pulled off the ground, torn apart from the signal, and suddenly he couldn't breathe.

_No, no, John would still be there, he promised, that what the message was for._

But panic started to settle in nonetheless. Rodney opened his eyes to a darkness broken only by small pools of light and murky grey shapes of people. But none of them were John.

While Ronon slung Rodney over his shoulder like he weighed nothing, and started making his way towards an indistinct shape in the distance, Rodney tried in vain to find the missing sound again. But everything was full of noise now, all too loud to bear as it echoed off the walls of the rooms and hallways Rodney was carried through, and all wrong.

Until there was a soft whisper that made everything fall into place again.

"Rodney, I'm fine," John said, right by Rodney's ear, his breath on Rodney's skin. After some hectic scrambling and an awkward fall Rodney was kneeling on a cold surface, breathing in a familiar scent mere inches from him. In the dim light Rodney saw John, sitting on the floor, leaning against a crumbled wall, one leg hastily bandaged with something but otherwise entirely whole.

Warm fingers reached for Rodney's face in the dark and pulled him in, John's mouth finding Rodney's without error and kissing him, over and over until he calmed down. John didn't let go even when Carson arrived and the marines manhandled him onto a stretcher. No-one even tried pulling them apart, they just worked their way around the pair, Carson tending to the wound, Lorne strapping John securely so he wouldn't fall off on the way back.

For Rodney there was nothing but the scent of John, the warmth of John, the feel of his skin as Rodney pushed his hands under his shirt, and yes, the damned beat of John's heart under Rodney's sore fingertips, a pulse that didn't make any effort to sound distinct enough to save his life, but which Rodney couldn't get enough of. He didn't care if it was a foolishly, stupidly, hopelessly romantic notion, but Rodney could have sworn his heart beat in the same rhythm with it.

"You and I need to have a discussion," John said softly when Rodney finally felt rational enough, and embarrassed enough, to pull back, "about how to deal with this separation anxiety of yours." John looked exhausted, but he smiled, happily and mischievously.

"Well I wouldn't get anxious if you wouldn't keep leaving me," Rodney replied with half-hearted irritation. He was too tired, too relieved, and too happy, to properly chastise the man. "One of these days I'm going to—"

"Sorry to interrupt this lovely reunion," Carson announced abruptly, "but I really do need to be taking him to the infirmary."

"Yes, yes, by all means, take the impossibly accident prone man away," Rodney sighed as he stood up to get out of the way, swaying on shaky feet as he did so. "I'll just wait for the next ride out of here."

"I could carry you," Ronon suggested, and Rodney didn't need to be a Sentinel to hear several sniggers.

"That won't be necessary," Rodney replied, and couldn't help smiling. He didn't care about a few laughs, what mattered was that John was safe. "But I wouldn't mind a friend or two to lean on."

"We will be there for you, Rodney," Teyla promised, "as always."

As they lifted John's stretcher up and got ready to leave, John's hand reached out to grab Rodney by the arm.

"Hey," he said, looking up at Rodney, eyes full of all the things his earlier message had been trying to convey. "This is not goodbye."

They were the words John would tell him each morning when he kissed Rodney's cheek before leaving for his run. They were the words Rodney would say when he slipped out of John's embrace and left to work in the lab for the night. They were the words they would whisper before falling asleep together. They were the words they silently mouthed to each other each time they went trough the Gate, even if it was just seconds apart.

This Is Not Goodbye.

They were all the words they needed, and contained everything they felt for each other.

"I know," Rodney replied. "Me too."

He laced his fingers with John's, and didn't let go.

~~~ End ~~~

 


End file.
